Cassandra Sell

Before joining CAST in 2015 as Senior Interaction Designer, Cassandra Sell worked with WGBH Digital in Brighton, MA as the lead digital designer on a variety of initiatives for both child and adult audiences.

At WGBH she worked closely with producers, content creators, and web developers, providing user experience strategies, interaction and visual design, and art direction across media platforms. In addition to educational initiatives for adults, Cassandra worked consistently on robust digital companion experiences for PBS national brands such as Masterpiece, Antiques Roadshow, and Medal Quest: American Athletes in the Paralympic Games.

Also during her tenure at WGBH, she worked on educational games for children's brands such as Curious George, Martha Speaks, and PEEP and the Big Wide World, with an emphasis on repeated user testing as a formative, user-driven design strategy.

She thrives on finding opportunities for true collaboration across disciplines to create experiences that bring people joy and overcome barriers to meaningful communication and learning.

Internships with Turner Broadcasting in London, U.K. and Sigma Group Advertising in New Jersey, as well as a semester of Fine Arts at the Burren College of Art in Ballyvaughan, Ireland were seminal to her understanding that with design thinking and real collaboration astounding work can be accomplished.

Inspiration

Jane McGonigal: Gaming can make a better world
TED Talk from 2010

Games like World of Warcraft give players the means to save worlds, and incentive to learn the habits of heroes. What if we could harness this gamer power to solve real-world problems? Jane McGonigal says we can, and explains how.